Health care moving into electronic age at Wal-Mart

KANSAS CITY , Mo. The future of health care at Wal-Mart will involve a heavy reliance on all things electronic as a means to improve overall efficiency, access to higher-quality care and the accuracy of medical records and prescriptions.

The company this year expects to work with physicians and other providers to fill an estimated 8 million electronically submitted prescriptions, and within three years will provide all of its employees and their families with electronic medical records, according to Wal-Mart president and chief executive officer Lee Scott. He also said the company this year would contract with select employers in the United States to help them manage how they process and pay prescription costs, and the initiative will save employers more than $100 million in 2008.

Scott’s health care and pharmacy comments were made Wednesday night to approximately 7,000 of the company’s U.S. store managers who gather annually in Kansas City for an event called the year beginning meeting.

“What your company does best is exactly what the U.S. health care system needs the most,” according to a transcript of Scott’s speech Wal-Mart released prior to the event. “It needs more affordability. It needs more accessibility. It needs to be more efficient. And it needs leaders with a genuine desire to work together for positive change.”

During his speech, ambitiously titled “The Company of the Future,” Scott went on to describe Wal-Mart’s goals regarding sustainability and the elimination of waste and new priorities regarding the ethical and responsible sourcing of products.

In each of those areas and with regard to health care, Wal-Mart was subjected to intense criticism the past five years. Initially and predictably, the company’s response to such criticism was defensive in nature. However, within the past few years, executives came to the realization that there was some truth to criticism and failing to adopt a more proactive and aggressive approach would be detrimental to the long-term prospects of a company that was already the world’s largest and as such faced higher expectations than others in the retail industry.

This was especially true in the health care arena where Wal-Mart occupies the unique position as the nation’s largest employer with nearly 1.4 million workers in addition to being a major health care provider through its network of pharmacies, eyecare center and increasingly in-store clinics. To counter the criticism, Wal-Mart improved employee access to its health plans by introducing low cost, high deductible alternatives and reducing eligibility wait times. The result of those changes were revealed earlier this week when Wal-Mart disclosed that more than half of the company’s U.S. employees now receive health care coverage directly from the company and nearly 93 percent of its employees have some type of health care coverage.

“Just as in the last few years, we are pleased to see an increase in enrollment numbers,” said Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of benefits and risk management. “With 690,970 associates and more than 1.1 million associates and dependants in total now covered by Wal-Mart’s plans, we can see that the improvements we’ve made are being embraced by our associates and their families.”

Going forward, Dillman will play a key role in executing Wal-Mart’s strategies regarding electronic health records and e-prescribing. She previously served as Wal-Mart’s chief information officer. It is through the increased use of technology that Wal-Mart expects to reap substantial cost benefits in addition to the wide range of quality of care benefits that stem from providers being able to efficiently and accurately share patient care information and provide pharmacies with accurate prescriptions.

“Our approach will be base on taking out unnecessary costs while providing high quality health care products and services,” Scott told the Wal-Mart store managers.

Such sweeping generalizations were prevalent throughout his speech that reads more like Scott is running for president than running a retail company expected to generate revenues north of $375 billion for its fiscal year ending January 31.

FDA halts clinical trial of ALS drug

LOS ANGELES The Food and Drug Administration has told CytRx to stop its clinical trial of the drug arimoclomol, which is being developed to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, because of the need for additional analysis of previous animal studies involving the drug, according to published reports.

CytRx said in a release that it has asked for further clarification from the FDA, and said that “arimoclomol has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated after being administered to about 185 study volunteers.”

ALS is a progressive condition that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Study indicates that drive-through can distract pharmacists

COLUMBUS, Ohio A new study in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care has indicated that pharmacists who work at stores with drive through windows are more likely to be distracted and those distractions can lead to processing delays, reduced efficiency and even dispensing errors.

The pharmacists who were surveyed reported that the design and layout of their workplaces has an impact on dispensing accuracy, especially the presence of drive-through window pick-up services. Results also indicate that automated dispensing systems in pharmacies are likely to reduce the potential for errors and enhance efficiency.

Even with stringent internal quality controls, pharmacists nationally make an estimated 5.7 errors per 10,000 prescriptions processed, according to the study, which translates to more than 2.2 million dispensing errors each year.

According to the survey, pharmacists perceive that the drive-through window has the biggest impact on causing pharmacists and their staff to take extra steps (average agreement response of 3.7 on a 5-point scale); reducing efficiency (average response of 3.8); and causing delays in prescription processing (average response of 3.7). The respondents also attributed dispensing errors (average response of 3.2) and communication errors (average response of 3.3) to the presence of a drive-through window.

“A pharmacist or staff member could be responsible for four or five tasks, and serving people at the drive-through window is just one of them,” said Sheryl Szeinbach, the study’s lead author. “Some people seeking the convenience of the drive-through window don’t care about getting information. They just want the medication, and they want it as fast as possible. They should probably think about that and at least look at the medication and make sure it’s OK. And if they have questions, it may behoove them to come into the pharmacy.”

RELATED NEWS

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a generic of Hoffman-La Roche’s Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) capsules from Lupin. The company’s generic will be available in 30-, 45- and 75-mg dosage strengths.
The product is inficated to treat acute, uncomplicated influenza A and B in patients 2 weeks of age and older, as well as to prevent influenza A and B in patients 1 year old and older. The drug had U.S. sales of roughly $467.8 million for the 12 months ended October 2017, according to IQVIA data.

Behavioral health pharmacy and telepsychiatry company Genoa, a QoL Healthcare Company, has reached a big number with its remote psychiatry offering. The Tukwila, Wash.-based company announced Tuesday that it had facilitated more than 100,000 telepsych consultations on its video conferencing platform.
Genoa attributes the milestone to its recent buildup of its telepsychiatry operations, which grew to include 35 in 2017 from 20 at the start of the year, and included 250 providers. In 2017, the company grew to serve more than 2,500 patients per week.

This year's flu continues to be Texas big, according to the Walgreens Flu Index released Wednesday, as the top 10 communities experiencing the greatest amount of flu incidence were all located in the Lone Star State for the week ended Jan. 6.
Iowa, Idaho and Arkansas rank behind Texas in terms of flu activity. And Montana, Idaho and Iowa ranked highest among states experiencing flu activity gains.

Amneal Biosciences has launched its generic of Otsuka’s Busulfex (busulfan injection, 6 mg/ml). The product is indicated to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia.
Amneal said that its generic is available in cartons of eight single-dose vials, each of which contains 60 mg of the drug in a 10-ml clear sterile solution. The product is made without natural rubber, latex, gluten or preservatives, Amneal said.
The drug had U.S. sales of roughly $80 million for the 12 months ended October 2017, according to data from IQVIA.

Amneal Pharmaceuticals has launched sevelamer carbonate tablets, 800 mg, in 270-count bottles. This generic from the Bridgewater, N.J.-based company is an AB-rated therapeutic equivalent to Renvela.
Amneal also launched five other products in addition to sevelamer carbonate:

Forgotten Password

Registration complete

REGISTER

USERNAME *

Spaces are allowed; punctuation is not allowed except for periods, hyphens, and underscores.

E-MAIL ADDRESS *

A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail.

Password *

Confirm Password *

Please choose a password for your account; it must be 8 - 30 characters. .

First Name *

Last Name *

Company Name *

Job Title *

ZIP *

Are you a *

Retailer or Healthcare professional

Non-Retailer

How many stores do you operate?: *

Which best describes the business/industry you work in?: *

Which best describes your job title?: *

Please select the newsletters you would like to subscribe to

DSN A.M.
Daily news stories covering the retail drug industry

Breaking News
First-to-the-market with developing stories in the industry